Thursday's HOT MIC

The rate at which Earth’s atmosphere is warming has not significantly accelerated over the past 23 years, according to research at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

If you take away the transient cooling in 1983 and 1992 caused by two major volcanic eruptions in the preceding years, the remaining underlying warming trend in the bottom eight kilometers (almost five miles) of the atmosphere was 0.096 C (about 0.17° Fahrenheit) per decade between January 1979 and June 2017.

That was unexpectedly close to the 0.09 C warming trend found when similar research was published in 1994 with only 15 years of data, said Dr. John Christy, director of UAH’s Earth System Science Center.

This work might also indirectly affirm recent research showing the atmosphere is less sensitive to the warming effects of rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than global climate models have suggested.

That's a polite way of saying the models predicting rising temps based on the amount of CO2 we release into the atmosphere are hooey. We have released massive amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the time period studied and temps have barely moved.

Mathematically removing the natural but transient climatic effects of volcanoes and El Niño/La Niña Pacific Ocean warming and cooling events leaves an underlying climate trend, all or some part of which might be attributed to human causes — including enhanced greenhouse forcing caused by rising levels of CO2 and other manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

At present, however, there is no accepted tool or technique for confidently estimating how much of the warming in the past 38+ years might be due to natural causes.

The percentage of warming that is due to human industrial activity has always been an issue - even among global warming advocates. It's impossible to tell how much CO2 is in the atmosphere due to humans and how much occurs naturally and what percent of human activity is responsible for how much warming. We have a good idea how much CO2 we release at ground level due to the burning of fossil fuels but some unknown process is occurring once it reaches the upper levels of our atmosphere that prevents any significant warming.

The bottom line is that the UN and global warming hysterics want us to formulate public policy based on predictive models that are not just incorrect but wildly so. It would be irresponsible in the extreme to create policies to address a problem no one knows the extent of or if it even exists.

Whosoever could make two ears of corn to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.Jonathan Swift, born 350 years ago #OTD. pic.twitter.com/EP1adMjZZm

“If what you’re reading all day long, morning and night, in the Jewish media is that Linda Sarsour and Minister Farrakhan are the existential threats to the Jewish community, something really bad is gonna happen and we gonna miss the mark on it,” she said Tuesday night at New York City’s The New School.

The best part? She made the remarks while sitting on a panel entitled “Anti-Semitism and the Struggle for Justice,” which was intended to be “a discussion on how to combat” bigotry against Jews.

As the DC helpfully reminded its readers, Farrakhan once praised Adolf Hitler as “a very great man.”

Rosiak is the only reporter I know of giving this story the attention it deserves. But enough of that -- let's get to the meat.

A court date for a former Democratic IT aide has been postponed by more than a month after the defendant’s attorney, a former Hillary Clinton aide, said he’s seeking to block prosecutors from using evidence that appears to include a government laptop tied to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

“The government has been in discussions with counsel for the defendants regarding complex discovery issues and other legal issues in this case, in particular issues surrounding claims of attorney-client privilege being raised by defendant Imran Awan,” court papers filed Tuesday say.

“Last night, counsel for both defendants indicated that they need additional time to review and analyze these issues, along with the voluminous discovery the government provided in this case,” according to the documents. “The government consents to this request.”

Chris Gowen, Awan’s attorney, said at the last hearing: “We do expect there being an attorney-client privilege issue in this case… What occurred is a backpack from my client was found, he was trying to get a better signal, there was a note that said attorney client privilege and a hard drive. We feel very strongly about this.”

It is unclear how the handwritten note saying “attorney client privilege” could be construed to cover a hard drive, rather than the pages of notebook it was contained on.

Indeed. The contents of that hard drive are most emphatically not subject to attorney-client privilege -- those contents are government property, and evidence in what ought to be the most serious and widely covered government corruption case since Watergate.